The Limits of Reason: Seascape as Psychic Metaphor

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SOURCE: "The Limits of Reason: Seascape as Psychic Metaphor," in Edward Albee: An Interview and Essays, edited by Julian N. Wasserman, The University of St. Thomas, 1983, pp. 141-53.

[In the essay below, Purdon asserts that it is "… in Seascape that Albee provides one of his clearest attempts to render his own understanding of the human psyche into extended and concrete metaphorical form. "]

One of the most notable aspects of Edward Albee's drama has been his recurrent interest in theatre as a means for the revelation of psychological process, for by his own admission Albee has, as a writer, been most interested in capturing the unconscious rhythms of his onstage characters rather than their superficial mannerisms. Clearly, with their extensive speeches directed to multiple audiences and their diminished physical action, many of Albee's plays have as their focus the motivation behind action rather than action itself. Thus one finds that with increasing regularity Albee's work seems to include both discussions of and metaphors for the cognitive process, so that within his works virtually no explanation for human consciousness—ranging from the brief discussion of the physio-electrical basis of knowledge in Listening to the use of the phrenological model as a prop in the psychological allegory, Tiny Alice—is left unexplored. However, it is in Seascape that Albee provides one of his clearest attempts to render his own understanding of the human psyche into extended and concrete metaphorical form. While Tiny Alice, dubbed by its critics as "metafuzzical,"1 works as an abstract treatise on human psychology, Seascape functions in the tradition of the medieval morality play with its more clearly defined figures serving as emblems for the distinct parts of the human consciousness.

In rendering his own version of human psychological makeup, Albee clearly borrows from but does not conspicuously adhere to the traditional psychic zones of Freudian tripartation, for the playwright does metaphorically dramatize the tension between the forces, or principles, which pull man between his desire for reality (order) and pleasure (chaos).2 Indeed, the principal characters, Charlie and Nancy, call the audience's attention to what might be termed the American mid-life crisis: their children grown, Charlie feels that he has earned a little rest, while Nancy believes that they have earned a little life. Yet the conflict, if it may be called that, in the central characters' purposes takes on the proportions of crisis when, at the end of the first act, Charlie and Nancy encounter Albee's dramatically unique representation of the psychic energy of the unconscious: the saurian characters, Leslie and Sarah. As symbols of such psychic energy, the primordial lizard-creatures represent both the means and the opportunity for the central characters to act upon the conflicting desires which have been kept in balance until this moment of crisis. Thus, it is through the metaphorical confrontation between the dynamic principles for reality and pleasure with the unknown saurian creatures that Albee presents his allegory of the process of the regulation of that energy, a theme which comprises the didactic matter of the play.

As the play begins, Albee first introduces the audience to this metaphor of the psyche through the characters of Charlie and Nancy. They converse as might any couple on an outing to the seashore while the intrusive sound of a jet aircraft is heard overhead. But as their dialogue continues and transforms itself into an argument, the emphasis each places on his respective point of view illustrates the tension and perennial conflict between reason and desire. Each in turn becomes a spokesman for the reality and pleasure principles. Accordingly, Nancy, who believes they have "earned a little life,"3 argues inconsistently but passionately for the pursuit of unreproved pleasure, especially in the leisure activity of beachcombing, while Charlie, who remains circumspect and noticeably inhibited, argues for moderation and the acceptance of the status quo.

The revelation of the pleasure principle through the character of Nancy in Act I is developed several ways, the most noticeable of which appears in Albee's parenthetical stage directions. From the moment the curtain rises, Nancy demonstrates the full spectrum of human emotion: one moment she laughs and is gay; the next, she is sad and testy. She is enthusiastic, then taunting, and an instant later disappointed; one moment she is cheerful and matter-of-fact; the next, bitter and begrudging. Furthermore, Albee puts the intensity of Nancy's passion and her emotional capaciousness in relief by comparing it to Charlie's stolid indifference. Even Nancy's seemingly insignificant movements on stage—her several returns to the paint box, for example——assume functional meaning, especially as they occur while Charlie remains lying in the supine position for nearly half of the first act.

In her mercurial changes of temperament and restive actions, Nancy is the embodiment of what Sigmund Freud describes as the primordial life-principle which knows "no organization and unified will, only an impulsion to obtain satisfaction."4 Nancy is the very personification of inconsis-tent behavior bent on the fulfillment of appetitive desire. As such, she is the character with whom Albee associates the preparation of food. As the argument between Charlie and Nancy unfolds, it is Nancy and not Charlie who begins packing the lunch hamper. Later, as Charlie gropes for an explanation of the vision of the sea creatures and blames the whole experience on spoiled liver paste, Albee reveals that it was Nancy who had prepared the meal and chosen the fatal menu.

Yet Nancy embodies more than mere dietary appetite. In contrast to her husband, Nancy demonstrates an unrepressed appetite for the sensuous experience of nature. Arguing for a life spent by the seashore, she tells Charlie, "I love the water, and I love the air, and the sand and the dunes and the beach grass, and the sunshine on all of it and the white clouds way off, and the sunsets and the noise the shells make in the waves …" (p. 5). Such unabashed appreciation for the sensual naturally leads to the presentation of Nancy as a creature of sexual appetite as well. Recalling the vicissitudes of their earlier married life, Nancy, not Charlie, introduces, first, the subject of infidelity and, second, the subject of coital loneliness, a modification of the concept of La Petit Morte. While she reassures Charlie by confessing that she never succumbed to her passions and desires, Nancy does, nevertheless, reveal that earlier in her marriage she was obsessed with the idea of unrestrained sexuality for a short period of time:

Yes, but the mind. And what bothered me was not what you might be doing … but that, all of a sudden, I had not. Ever … All at once I thought: it was over between us … and I thought back to before I married you, and the boys I would have done it with, if I had been that type, the firm-fleshed boys I would have taken in my arms had it occurred to me. And I began to think of them, Proust running on, pink and ribbons, looking at your back, and your back would turn and it would be Johnny Smythe or the Devlin boy, or one of the others, and he would smile, reach out a hand, undo my ribbons, draw me close, ease on. Oh, that was a troubling time.

(p. 22)

Yet the speech reveals more about Nancy than the nature of her sexual fantasies. While it portrays her as a creature of what Freud termed "impulsion," it shows that those natural impulses have been kept in check by external and, perhaps to Nancy, alien forces; the societal concept of "that type." Moreover, Nancy's reference to Proust is especially significant here since, within the context of the passage, it introduces the Proustian concept of absence, one of the most revealing of the 19th century literary representations of the primordial life principle of the Freudian "impulsion to obtain satisfaction." This view of love as a "subjective creation of imagination which cannot thrive in the presence of its object" explains the essential motivation behind her ephemeral infidelity.5

Albee completes the development of the metaphoric representation of the pleasure principle in the character of Nancy by illustrating telling idiosyncrasies of her behavior and qualifying the nature of her relationship with Charlie. Nancy, for example, is conspicuously and frequently ebullient, especially as she returns to her painting and tries to persuade Charlie "to unfetter" himself and "see everything twice" (p. 10). While originating in a natural desire, this ebullience, owing to its frequency, illustrates the frenetic condition of the "impulsion to satisfaction." Further, her thinking—often muddled and, as she herself points out, contradictory—degenerates frequently into emotionalism, which further illustrates the disorganized condition of desire. Likewise, her repeated demonstrations of peevishness—to which she, again, admits guilt as she states to Charlie almost perfunctorily, "I was being petulant" (p. 31)——reveal a disunified will. And her subordinate relationship to Charlie, which she acknowledges several times, also contributes to the metaphor of the pleasure principle in that it intimates the dynamics of mental process. This subservient status takes on significant meaning and even explains much of Nancy's argument when she begins to tell Charlie how she nearly became unfaithful and states, "The deeper your inertia went, the more I felt alive" (p. 21). As reason loses control of desire, the impulsion to satisfaction assumes a stronger vitality. Hence, Charlie's direct response shortly thereafter to Nancy's taunting—"You're not cruel by nature; it's not your way" (p. 17)—functions in a severalfold manner: it enables Charlie to gain the advantage in the argument, provides a statement of her character, and introduces for the audience, on the one hand, an illustration of the dynamic process by which one force keeps the other in check, and, on the other, a significant non-judgmental account of the nature of unrestrained fulfillment of satisfaction. The primordial life function is neither good nor bad; it is just the manifestation of tremendous vitality. As Freud points out: "Naturally, the id knows no values, no good and evil, no morality."6

As Albee uses the character of Nancy to illustrate the pleasure principle, so he likewise uses Charlie to embody the corresponding reality principle and its role of restraining, or counter-balancing, the uncontrolled impulses of the former. Thus, while Nancy refers to Proust, Charlie is through his own allusion associated with Anatole France, a figure noted for his rationalistic, dispassionate approach to art.7 While Nancy consistently reacts through the display of emotion, Charlie reacts through reason. Thus, Charlie's first reaction to the sight of Leslie and Sarah is to posit the "logical" explanation that he and Nancy have become victims of food poisoning, a logical if incorrect means of making the un-known and irrational fit neatly into the constructs of his own world. Thus, in Charlie one finds a man who finds it easier to yield up his own life, through the assumption of his own death, than to accept that which defies his own logic and experience. While Charlie first becomes distraught at the sight of the two reptilian creatures, he quickly gains control over his emotions, in contrast to Nancy, who is immediately attracted to the creatures precisely because they seem so alien and, hence, apart from ordinary, rational experience.

However, if Charlie and Nancy are so different in their initial responses to life in general and the sea-creatures in particular, it would be a mistake to conceive of their mid-life crisis as being analogous to that of the anonymous pair in Counting the Ways, whose lives are shown to have grown so separate and self-contained, for the point of conflict between Nancy and Charlie is the way in which their differently directed points of view act upon each other in order to create a workable psychological balance which allows them to function successfully in the world at large. Thus, Charlie and Nancy cannot ultimately be examined in isolation since both of their identities come from the continual tug-of-war between their conflicting desires, a conflict which results in their perpetual process of dynamic self-definition and their mutual dependency rather than separateness. One sees this self-defining tug-of-war in Nancy's attempt to convince Charlie to relive his boyhood experience of submerging himself in the ocean. Charlie points out to Nancy that as a child he enjoyed sensory delight and the condition of being submerged and contained in the water:

I used to go way down; at our summer place; a protective cove. The breakers would come in with a storm, or a high wind, but not usually. I used to go way down, and try to stay. I remember before that, when I was tiny, I would go to the swimming pool, at the shallow end, let out my breath and sit on the bottom … and when I was older, we were by the sea. Twelve; yes, or thirteen.

I used to lie on the warm boulders, strip off … learn about my body … And I would go into the water, take two stones, as large as I could manage, swim out a bit, tread, look up one final time at the sky … relax … begin to go down … just one more object come to the bottom, or living thing, part of the undulation and silence. It was very good.

(p. 16)

Clearly, Charlie's description of this world of "undulation and silence" is one of a state of pre-consciousness, of the mind free and unrestricted by reason and, especially, social convention which restrains impulse. Nancy's prolonged insistence that Charlie attempt to re-enact what has become just a pleasant and remote memory is her attempt to convert Charlie into her own image by returning him to a type of prelapsarian state of consciousness. Significantly, Charlie's stern resistance to this letting go of the conscious world is rooted in his self-consciousness, his awareness of himself as an adult. As in the case of Nancy's early sexual urges, it is the category, or role, imposed from without which ultimately separates Charlie from the pleasures of his youth. For both Charlie and Nancy, then, the result of this verbal give and take concerning desire and restraint is a process of self-definition through assertion and defense of their own points of view as each tries to defend his own values while converting those of the other.8

Having established the tenuous balance between the two parts of the waking consciousness, Albee proceeds to examine and test that balance through the introduction of the two saurian creatures who have as their origin the hidden, subconscious world of "undulation and silence" described by Charlie much as the playwright does with Jerry's entrance into the well ordered, conventional world of Peter in The Zoo Story as well as in the unexpected appearance of Elizabeth in The Lady from Dubuque. If the appearance of the saurian creatures is intended as a litmus test of the central characters, the differences between Charlie and Nancy become apparent almost immediately. However, in order to understand these differences, it is important to recognize an important but subtle metamorphosis which occurs within the play. The first part of the play, the initial debate between Charlie and Nancy takes place in the realm of ordinary consciousness, the world of reason. It is a world in which Charlie, as a symbol of reason and convention, acts as indolent restraint on the more active pleasure principle. The interjection of reason into that world is symbolized by the intrusive sounds of jet aircraft into the naturalistic scenery of the first act. The jets, whose sounds are heard some four times within the first act, are representatives, par excellence, of controlling rationality—for they are non-natural machines created through reason in order to satisfy and, hence, channel the primordial, imaginative urge to fly.

With the appearance of Leslie and Sarah that world is transformed into a realm in which the laws no longer apply and where the non-rational is in control. In this made-over world, the jet airplanes, whose presence were so strongly and frequently felt in the first act, make only one brief appearance. The terror which they inspire in Leslie and Sarah as well as the discomfort they create for Nancy show just how alien such machines are to nature. Within this context even the "reasonable" Charlie doubts their worth—"They'll crash into the dunes one day; I don't know what good they do" (p. 111)—with the result that he repeatedly emphasizes their status as mere "machines" whose imitation of the flight of birds is as unsatisfactory and incomplete as he had earlier judged a parrot's unthinking mimicry of human speech to be. Thus the formerly lethargic Charlie becomes active and aggressive and has to be restrained by the previously restive Nancy. From the first appearance of the saurian creatures, Nancy has clearly been in control. She is the first to notice their approach. As she recalls her childhood desires, she sees Leslie and Sarah emerge from the water; as she and Charlie discuss the possibility of Charlie's submerging himself, she notices that the two visitors are lying prone on the beach; and as she almost cajoles Charlie into slipping into the water, she observes that she has lost track of Leslie and Sarah. Nancy is also the first to recognize the intrinsic beauty of the visitors, although, in keeping with the function of her characterization, she does not know why she finds them aesthetically pleasing. Thus, as Charlie recoils at the sight of Leslie and Sarah and assumes a defensive posture, Nancy almost dreamily responds to Charlie's commands, extolling Leslie's and Sarah's beauty, first, with "Charlie! They're magnificent!" (p. 44) and, later, with "Charlie, I think they're absolutely beautiful. What are they?" (p. 45).

Yet if Nancy is in her element, Charlie clearly is not. From the outset, the reason and restraint which he demonstrated in the first part of the play repeatedly fail him in his dealings with the saurian intruders. His rational explanation for the appearance of the creatures as a result of "bad liver paste" is painfully inadequate, even to the non-rational, intuitive Nancy. And with the movement into the non-rational world, the playwright's function becomes the demonstration of the failure of rationality in the face of the irrational. This is, of course, a familiar theme in many of Albee's works, such as A Delicate Balance and Tiny Alice, and is no doubt responsible for Albee's interest in and adaptation of Herman Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener."9 Thus, as reason breaks down, Albee proceeds to give the unconscious a conscious form just as, when the restraints of marriage weakened, Nancy found herself giving form to her fantasies of premarital encounters with young men. Yet what is unique about Seascape is that, while Leslie's and Sarah's appearance suggests promordiality, it is not their saurian physical natures but rather the lengthy and seemingly desultory conversations which they have with Charlie and Nancy that confirm their introduction as representations of psychic energy. On the one hand, these discussions reveal an absence of the laws of logic; on the other, they demonstrate a disregard for or ignorance of social convention, moral restraint, and cognitive awareness of the totality of being—in other words, the artificial restraints imposed from without upon the "impulsion to satisfaction." In this regard, Leslie and Sarah also provide a view of the source of aggression and desire, another principal aspect of libido.10

As the two couples encounter each other at the beginning of Act II, they reveal fear and a lack of trust. No sooner do they introduce themselves to each other than they begin a series of dialogues which, while intended to be informative, end in futility, without the exchange of any meaningful information. Significantly, the first of these dialogues concerns eating. Interestingly, it also introduces the correlative condition of the ignorance of social convention. Charlie points out to Leslie that he does not know Leslie's eating habits. He then adds that "It'd be perfectly normal to assume you … [that is, Leslie and Sarah] … ate whatever … you ran into … you know, whatever you ran into" (p. 65). Leslie's ingenious response—"No; I don't know" (p. 65)——reveals the weakness of Charlie's assumption. But the absurdity of the assumption is not exposed until Charlie, who is striving for a simple response to Leslie's initial inquiry regarding Nancy's and his disposition, states that he and Nancy do not eat "anything that talks; you know, English" (p. 66). Nancy at this turn in the dialogue points out that parrots do talk and that people eat parrots. This revelation not only emphasizes the illogic of Charlie's second generalization, which is reinforced by Leslie who asks, "What are you saying?" (p. 66) but also brings the dialogue to an abrupt halt, as Charlie attempts a restatement of his original assumption, saying "I'm trying to tell you … we don't eat our own kind" (p. 66). Charlie does not contradict himself, but his attempt to sustain his original assumption undermines itself and meaning vanishes.

Another exchange that brings to the fore the absence of logic appears shortly afterward as Nancy shows Sarah her breasts. As in the first case, this instance also provides another view of the ignorance of social convention on the parts of the saurian creatures. The passage in question begins with the discussion of the function of clothing, another artificial convention, but soon focuses on the subject of Nancy's breasts. While Nancy conducts herself in a straightforward manner and shows no shame in the hope of enlightening Leslie and Sarah who have never seen a mammalian breast, Charlie becomes irrational at the seeming breakdown of decorum. At first Charlie demonstrates a postlapsarian prudishness when he corrects Nancy, indicating that she should say "mammary" instead of "breast" (p. 75). Next, when Sarah ingenuously beckons Leslie to see Nancy's breasts, Charlie reveals possessiveness, stating that he does not want Leslie looking at Nancy's nakedness. But when Charlie is questioned by Nancy and Leslie as to the motivation for his possessiveness and Leslie states conditionally that he does not want to see Nancy's breasts, Charlie reverses his original attitude, defending and extolling the virtue and beauty of Nancy's anatomy: "They're not embarrassing; or sad! They're lovely! Some women … some women … Nancy's age, they're … some women … I love your breasts" (p. 77). While Charlie's about-face can certainly be viewed as a positive act of acceptance, it reveals the working of the emotional rather than the cognitive consciousness because it is predicated upon pride and follows a demonstration of repressive social behavior. It is no coincidence, then, that Albee includes in his stage directions for Charlie that he is "more flustered than angry" (p. 77). What Charlie achieves is what he needs to achieve; that he finally perceives beauty through the challenging of his possessive nature, however, demonstrates the absence of logic.

While several other instances of emotionalism and nonsequiturs appear in this act, the discussion of ontology provides the best example of the suspension of the laws of reason. In an effort to explain why they are dead, the absurdity of which cannot go unnoticed, Charlie tries to explain to Leslie that created reality is an illusion and that true existence comes about through thought. Instead of being logical, Charlie becomes flustered and angry, and the dialogue degenerates into an emotional bout which concludes ironically with Charlies losing control of himself, shouting the name of Descartes:

Leslie: Then I take it we don't exist.

Charlie: (Apologetic.) Probably not; I'm sorry.

Leslie: (TO Nancy.) That's quite a mind he's got there.

Nancy: (Grudgingly defending Charlie.) Well … he thinks things through. (Very cheerful.) As for me, I couldn't care less; I'm having far too interesting a time.

Sarah: (Gets on all fours.) Oh, I'm so glad!

Leslie: (Comes three steps down L. ridge. Puzzled.) I think I exist.

Charlie: (Shrugs.) Well, that's all that matters; it's the same thing. …

Charlie: What?

Leslie: What you said.

Charlie: (Barely in control.) descartes!! descartes!! i think: therefore i am! ! (Pause.) cogito ergo sum! i think: therefore i am. …

(p. 108)

Leslie's comment that Charlie has "quite a mind" adds a further touch of irony, but it is Charlie's final comment concerning death as a release that confirms that logic has indeed failed. That Charlie beckons death by describing the final moments of life shows that he prefers the dissolution of life or existence and, in turn, the absence of reason. While the sound of an airplane flying overhead ends the discussion, the actual termination of the exchange of ideas, then, occurs in Charlie's demonstration of emotion. Even with the invocation of Descartes, the laws of logic remain absent.

The final fight or disagreement which draws the play to a close might also be viewed as another instance of the suspension of the laws of logic. Charlie's attempt to make Sarah cry is certainly irrational; this persistent taunting is clearly cruel. But the fight also introduces another view of the unconscious; it reveals an account of aggression. As Charlie forces Sarah to admit that she would cry her heart out if Leslie ever left her, Leslie grabs Charlie by the throat and slowly strangles him. Leslie's act of aggression is a demonstration of brute force, but as Leslie himself implies shortly afterward in the line "Don't you talk to me about brute beast" (p. 132), Charlie's remorseless questioning illustrates a verbal manifestation of the same act. Leslie's implication also clarifies Charlie's previous statements concerning Leslie and Sarah. When Charlie begins the confrontation which nearly leads to his own strangulation, he exclaims that he does not understand his own feelings toward Leslie and Sarah: "I don't know what more I want. (To Leslie and Sarah.) I don't know what I want for you. I don't know what I feel toward you; it's either love or loathing. Take your pick" (p. 128). While Charlie's ambivalence represents a lack of conscious control, the fact that he does describe his feelings toward Leslie and Sarah as being either of love or loathing represents an acknowledgement of Leslie and Sarah as being either the source of aggression or of desire.

Several other minor instances of aggression also arise in the second act, such as Charlie's continued taunting of Leslie and Sarah, but the one that brings the question of the unconscious clearly to the fore, like the fight in the conclusion, occurs when Charlie questions Sarah's fidelity. Charlie gets Sarah to admit that she has not "coupled" with anyone but Leslie; however, Leslie, who, like Nancy, is confused by the line of questioning, asks Charlie to state precisely what "are you after" (p. 128). When Charlie cannot and evades making an attempt at a conceptual understanding of his own purpose, a fight nearly breaks out—Nancy's and Sarah's joint intercession notwithstanding. The conflict which arises, then, results partly from Charlie's effrontery but mostly from a breakdown in communication. Ironically, it is Charlie, not Leslie, who is incapable of maintaining symbolic logic, although he blames Leslie for his own ineffectuality when he condescendingly adds, "Especially to someone who has no grasp of conceptual matters, who hasn't heard of half the words in the English language, who lives on the bottom of the sea and has green scales!" (p. 94).

This representation of aggression resulting from the absence of conceptual ability introduces a third way in which Albee creates the metaphor of uncontrolled psychic energy. Throughout the second act, he calls attention to the need for and the absence of a cognitive awareness of the totality of being. The latter obviously appears in all of the instances of aggression and lack of logic that appear from the moment the second act begins. The former, on the other hand, appears twice: first, early in the act, as Charlie and Leslie enter into a discussion of anatomical differences and, second, as Nancy and Charlie later attempt to explain and define the concept of emotion for Leslie and Sarah. In the discussion of the anatomical differences, Leslie and Sarah learn the distinctions between toes and fingers, arms and legs. This knowledge then leads them to an understanding of the social convention of hand-shaking, which they perform enthusiastically. While the information allows Leslie and Sarah to experience something they have never known, the significance of the event lies in the fact that it represents the beginning of the fusion of the conscious, embodied by Nancy and Charlie, and the unconscious self, embodied by Leslie and Sarah. In the later discussions of emotion, the same thing happens but to a greater degree. As Nancy and Charlie explain the nature of emotion to Leslie and Sarah, not only do the two couples gradually overcome the differences that separate them, but each couple also gains its own emotional equilibrium. Charlie and Nancy work out the doubts that each has felt toward the other; Leslie and Sarah learn what love is. Furthermore, through the delineation of emotion and the attainment of the awareness of social convention, Nancy and Charlie discover the means by which to keep Leslie and Sarah from retreating to the sea. Thus, as Albee indicates in the conclusion, it is through the understanding of the physical that one begins to perceive the totality of his being, but it is through the examination of the emotions, difficult as it may be, that one attains the totality of being.

Seascape, then, is much more than a fantastic dramatic experience. Like many of Albee's other plays, it is a romance. It provides a view of order in the presentation of the metaphoric representations of the reality and pleasure principles and a dissolution of that order in the symbolic representation of psychic energy. Like all romances, it possesses an essentially comic structure and so offers a resolution to the dissolution. Symbolically, that resolution appears in the form of a handshake. But as the conclusion to the second act demonstrates, the means by which order is reestablished is through the maintaining of contact with and the understanding of the subconscious: hence, the function of Nancy's unremitting insistence in the closing moments of the play that Leslie and Sarah not leave. To attain consciousness, as Albee indicates, one must be willing to enter the seascape, or Charlie's "protected cove," where land and sea—consciousness and the unconscious—meet and learn to accept the meaning of the experience. In that sense, Seascape, with its face-to-face confrontation between its creatures of the land and the sea, is not the flawed tale of unanswered evolutionary questions often described by critics11 but is, instead, an optimistic blueprint for the development of a higher consciousness, for in Albee's mind evolution is clearly a matter of consciousness rather than form.

Notes

1John Chapman, "Revival of Tiny Alice: Still a Metafuzzical Bore," New York Daily News (NYDN), 30 September 1969, contained in New York Theatre Critic Reviews (NYTCR), 1969, p. 256.

2For a brief discussion of these two principles, see Sigmund Freud, A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis, trans, by Joan Riveire (New York: Garden City, 1943), pp. 311-2.

3Edward Albee, Seascape (New York: Antheneum, 1975), p. 37. All future page references appear in the text.

4Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, trans, by W. J. H. Sprott (New York: Norton, 1933), pp. 102ff.

5Geoffrey Brereton, A Short History of French Literature (Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1968), p. 243.

6Freud (Sprott), p. 105.

7Brereton, p. 232.

8In this, Charlie and Nancy are much like George and Martha of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Like Charlie and Leslie, George and Martha seem to embody dispassionate intellect and unrestrained sexuality locked in perpetual, self-defining battle. As becomes apparent at the end of the play, their verbal battles are not symptoms of the breaking apart of their marriage but, rather, the dynamic force which binds the two differently directed individuals together: hence, Martha's vigorous defense of George at the play's end. For a discussion of similarities between Virginia Woolf and Seascape, see Howard Kissel, "Seascape," Women's Wear Daily, 27 January 1975, reprinted in NYTCR, 1975, p. 370.

9Albee completed an unpublished libretto adaptation of Melville's short story in 1961.

10Freud (Sprott), pp. 140ff.

11See Edwin Wilson, "Disturbing Creatures of the Deep," Wall Street Journal, 28 January 1975, reprinted in NYTCR, 1975, p. 370. For the view that the play ends optimistically, see Henry Hewes, "Theatre," Saturday Review, 8 March 1975, p. 40, as well as Sam Coale, "The Visions of Edward Albee," Providence Journal, 28 December 1975. Reprinted in Newsbank (Literature) (Nov.-Dec, 1975), p. A3, and Clive Barnes, "Albee's Seascape is a Major Event," New York Times, 27 January 1975 reprinted in NYTCR, 1975, p. 368.

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